Foreign Word of the Day: Epibreren

There are words we need to borrow from other languages.  From Dutch, that word of the day is “epibreren”.  “Epibreren” in the Dutch dictionary, which means to “perform unspecified activities which should give the impression that they are important, even though they do not amount to anything”.  This is an invented word, with no real etymology.  Simon Carmiggelt was a famed Dutch writer because of his daily newspaper columns and his television appearances.  Carmiggelt used this word, for the first time, in a column in the newspaper “Het Parool”.  In an interview, he said he heard the word, for the first time, in 1953.  Apparently, a civil servant had sent Carmiggelt away because the document that he was waiting for had to be “epibrated”.  This is how the story went, as translated by Ruud Hisgen, from the collection of columns “Ping pong”, from 1954: 

Carmiggelt  had asked the civil servant, in front of the others, as he recounted, “’Could you tell me?’ I said, with difficulty, ‘Just now you spoke of epibrating … it may be very stupid of me, but what does it mean?’ 

A murmuring of approval went through the rows of people, and even the civil servant looked slightly moved.  He, then, he grabbed my hand, and said, “This really is a very special moment, sir.” 

‘Why?,’ I asked. 

‘Because you ask what it means,’ the man said. ‘As it happens, it does not mean anything at all.  I made it up myself.  One day, there was a troublesome gentleman at the counter, who wanted to make us hurry a matter, which needed its time.  I said, ‘Sir, you are quite right, but allow us another week to epibrate the matter.  The word presented itself from the fullness of my heart.  And it worked excellently: the man went away in a resigned mood.’’” 

The word has come to mean to act convincingly that you are doing something important when you are not, and originated from a bureaucrat doing just that.